[2.08] An Automated Software Package for the KISS Objective-Prism Survey for Emission-Line Galaxies

J. L. Herrero and J. J. Salzer (Wesleyan University)

We have engaged in the development of a software package for the
automated reduction of CCD images taken as part of a wide-field
objective-prism survey for extragalactic emission-line sources.
The survey, called KISS (KPNO International Spectroscopic Survey),
is an international collaborative effort to survey for emission-line
galaxies (ELGs) to B = 20 -- 21 over large areas of the sky. It
utilizes the 0.61-m Burrell Schmidt telescope located at KPNO with
an objective prism and a large-format CCD detector, and selects
objects via the presence of strong line emission. The survey technique
used yields 20--30 ELG candidates per square degree, which is 200--300
times the surface density of the Markarian survey.
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The KISS reduction package was designed to run under the IRAF image
processing environment, and will eventually grow to be a complete IRAF
package. Tasks operate on pairs of images for each field, one direct
image and one spectral image. The direct image, taken with the prism
removed, is used to locate all objects in the the field; it is typically
1 magnitude (or more) deeper than the corresponding spectral image.
The software locates automatically all objects in the direct image,
performs a coordinate transformation to align the direct and spectral
images, extracts the spectra of all objects in the spectral images including
applying full corrections for overlapping spectra, and then searches the
extracted 1D spectra for emission-line candidates. The output consists
of an STSDAS ``ttools" format file which contains the extracted spectra,
coordinates, and magnitudes of all ELG candidates. Additional tasks
are available for examining the processed data.
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Although The KISS survey is directed towards finding emission-line
objects, the software developed could be easily used for other
digital objective-prism surveys.